50 Smartest Companies 2017

June 27, 2017

Each year we identify 50 companies creating new opportunities by combining important technologies and business savvy. Some are large companies that seem to be growing ever larger, like Amazon and Apple. Others, like IBM, or General Electric are old-guard giants betting on technology renewal. And the list is full of ambitious startups like SpaceX, which is changing the economics of space travel with reusable rockets; Face ++, a pioneer in face recognition technology; and additive-manufacturing firms Carbon and Desktop Metal. For additional perspective on the list, which starts below, please see our essay, "It Pays to Be Smart."

Project Maven to Deploy Computer Algorithms to War Zone by Year’s End

August 15, 2017

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2017 — Winning wars with computer algorithms and artificial intelligence were among the topics that Defense Department intelligence officials discussed during a recent Defense One Tech Summit here.

The tech behind the DARPA Grand Challenge winner will now be used by the Pentagon

August 14, 2017

After witnessing the raw power of a machine that can fix its own software security flaws at DEF CON 24 more than one year ago, the Pentagon has officially purchased the revolutionary technology from a small, Pittsburgh-based firm.

AI and the Challenge of Cybersecurity

May 9, 2017

For the past four decades, clever programmers have written computer viruses and worms that replicate and spread, either by bypassing technical security features or by taking advantage of human nature. Hacks started with playful images appearing unexpectedly, shifted to emails sent by harvesting address lists and turning thousands of computers into a vast “botnet” that attacks servers, and more recently, have locked down systems while demanding ransom payments.

Mayhem Hacker Robot Is Here To Protect Us From Hacking Attacks

February 3, 2017

Every year, we see large botnets of compromised devices affecting the internet on a global scale. Although, as impossible it may sound, the future might have an army of robots dedicated to fixing vulnerabilities in devices like routers and IoT devices, often a soft target for hackers while building massive botnets to create high-intensity DDoS attacks.

In a riff on Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, a powerful software bot is being used to defeat botnets. Carnegie Mellon spinoff ForAllSecure’s Mayhem software won $2 million in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon hacking contest in Las Vegas last August, according to MIT Technology Review.